Pages

Friday, 25 October 2013

Implausible Deniability - Cutting the NSA out of the (data) Loop

The saga of the Snowden revelations becomes more expansive as the days go by. Camp followers of the NSA, like Angela Merkel are suddenly "finding religion" on privacy issues when it is her phone that is being bugged, not just Johann Schmidt down on the Hochstrasse. As for the France, one of the countries that blocked Evo Morales plane upon instructions from their "oldest ally", they are now too moving into high dudgeon.

Brace yourself for the next revelations which will probably be that leaders of some of the other Four Pillars, Cameron on down to New Zealand will have been spied upon as well. With friends like these......

Hell hath no fury like a Merkel scorned and while the US Congress may be suckers for Clapper assurances, the sophistry involved in the statement "we are currently not spying on Germany's leader's phone calls and shall not do in the future" is fooling no-one outside of Capitol Hill. This is the newest twist in the words and represents the end-game of Implausible Deniability, to neologise further a neologism.

The policy recommendations here are relatively simple.... Firstly, Angela should get herself a disposable cellphone. But on a greater level, we should be pushing (using our MEPs in the Liberal bloc in Strasbourg) for an EU move to force the very largest US-based information firms to create EU-based server farms for non-US traffic. Thus Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, who all have the financial wherewithal to establish such server farms if push came to (legislative) shove would be forced to create systems where traffic is not routed through the US. If they want to do business in the EU then this will be the cost for them to do so. They would also need to have at least one main board director based in Europe who would be a "hostage" effectively to be arrested if the companies breached the legislation on privacy by permitting server access in the EU.

If they refuse to play ball because their political masters do not allow it then the EU could resort to some Chinese techniques to punish them. Who would have thought it that the Chinese were on the ball when it comes to Google and the NSA well before the Europeans had the blinkers fall from their eyes.